The present invention relates generally to power management, and more particularly, to systems and methods for power management of different functional modes of operation of an integrated circuit such as a multi-core System on Chip (SOC).
To manage power consumption, an SoC may be partitioned into various power domains such that each peripheral belongs to one of the power domains. An SoC will further have multiple modes where some of the peripherals will be active and some will be powered off. The mode where only a minimum required set of peripherals are active, is referred to as a Standby mode. The subset of the modules that are always alive are referred to as being in the alive domain and the subset of the modules that are power gated are referred to as being in the power gated domain. Typically, isolation cells are used to isolate the alive domain from the power gated domain. The different functional modes of operation typically reside in different power domains and have different power requirements. Switching between modes typically involves stopping, pausing or re-setting various modules or peripherals comprising the SOC during a transition. These methods may interrupt operation of peripherals during a transition. These discontinuities in operation are undesirable for the end user of the system. Thus, it would be advantageous to provide a means for switching between modes having different power requirements, in a non-intrusive and easily managed manner from the end user's point of view, whereby continuity of operation of peripherals can be maintained. It would also be advantageous to minimize the time taken to switch between modes.